After years in the Californian sun, standing in front of an easel in an East Yorkshire winter with its chill winds couldn’t have been an appetising prospect.

But David Hockney was determined to capture the arrival of Spring along Woldgate - an intriguing Roman lane that runs along a ridge inland from the coast near Bridlington, where he had then been living for six years.

To show just how much everything changes meant starting in the depths of Winter.

Fortunately the celebrated Bradford born artist, then 73, had a new tool at hand - an iPad - the Apple model had been released the previous January - and which he’d rapidly mastered.

Gallery assistants pose with a 2011 series of ipad drawings, "the Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire", by British artist David Hockney at a press call for Sotheby's Frieze week exhibitions in London on October 10, 2025. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

placeholder image — Gallery assistants pose with a 2011 series of ipad drawings, "the Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire", by British artist David Hockney at a press call for Sotheby's Frieze week exhibitions in London on October 10, 2025. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)

He made his first iPad drawing on January 2 2011, returning every day to different spots on Woldgate, keeping the exuberant palate of colours honed over years in the sun and injecting a UK spring with vivid pinks and greens.

A total of 51 drawings went on to be shown as part of his acclaimed major RA show A Bigger Picture in London 2012.

The art world is taking a keen interest as a series of 17 iPad drawings from a private collection will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on Friday. The iPad meant Hockney could work quickly under the shifting skies and not have to wait for paint to dry.

“He said Turner would have loved (the iPad). They catch the atmosphere, the subtleties,” said Sotheby’s head of prints Yessica Marks.

“First he drew with his fingers then with a stylus, a digital pen. He discovered they could be printed 10 times their scale without losing the impact.”

The group of 17 iPad drawings are “without precedent,” said Yessica, who had just come from hanging them in Sotheby’s gallery. “Photos don’t do them justice,” she said. “They are so atmospheric, really complex and nuanced.

“They are not nostalgic, looking back, they are a statement of renewal. He is embracing new tools, new seasons, new ways of seeing. They are optimistic.”

Hockney got to know the Yorkshire Wolds as a teenager working in the fields stacking corn.

During the 1990s, he started making more frequent visits to Yorkshire from LA to visit his mother who was living in Bridlington.

He’d drive over the Wolds to visit his close Bradford friend, the late Jonathan Silver, who had been diagnosed with cancer ,and around 2005 decided to spend more time in Bridlington, where his brother and sister also lived.

He wrote: “I had planned to record the spring arriving in 2011 having observed its arrival for seven years on Woldgate.

“In winter in Woldgate the branches of trees seem to be stretching upwards, searching for nourishing light”.

The drawings are expected to fetch a total of between £1.7m and £2.6m.